This research provides an account of a mass of Good Friday at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. To understand the impact of the service, however, it is necessary to provide some background on the meaning and significance of Good Friday in Christian belief. From there it will be possible to see the significance of the liturgical choices made at Church of the Holy Trinity.
The significance of the liturgy of Good Friday is that this day represents the climax of Holy Week, the day of Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Commentators who analyze the religious significance of that day say that it commemorates the greatest humiliation of the Messiah, but it is out of the death of Jesus that the Resurrection and glory of the Christian religion proceed. As Smith (481) puts it: "The whole business [of the condemnation and betrayal of Jesus] was inelegant at best. But what an amazing outcome." Smith continues:
The servant gave his life, and in so doing he gave a life to those who observed his suffering. Observers came to realize what had happened. . . . They acknowledged that their survival was the result of the work of the servant (Smith 481-2).
That result, in theologian Paul Tillich's analysis, is best formulated as the New Being, which is Tillich's name for the historical importance of the spirituality surrounding the emergence of Christian faith. The New Being is impossible to understand without the experience of Jesus' death on the cross, for only if the Crucifixion is possible can the Resurrection that embodies the New Being become possible. That makes the Crucifixion, which is commemorated on Good Friday, "the decisive event [that] occurs in the center of history and . . . gives history a center. . . . Christianity knows the revelatory possibilities in every moment of history" (Tillich 88).
The Crucifixion points up the special nature of Jesus, as both Son of God and Son of Man. It is for that...